KUCH 'SEX BOMB' JO BOMB KE DHAMAAKE MEIN UDD GAYE... BY ALI PETER JOHN .

Sex and sexy women have always been a part of Hindi films, like in films made about sex in other languages and in different parts of the world - Ali Peter John

Some films show sex in a very subtle manner and some do it very blatantly and brazenly and there are actresses who have either been inspired by bold stories to do sex scenes or do them without any relevance to the themes of the film and are called sex bombs.

These actresses who have been branded as sex bombs have always been a part of Hindi films, but some of them were star sex bombs in the 70s and 80s.

They were good actresses, but once they were trapped in the image of the sex bombs, there was no saving them and they ruled and vanished as sex bombs.

Some of them even had to suffer in their personal lives just because of this kind of branding, but they had no other way of making it in Hindi films except by working as sex bombs.

They even had pressure on them and were looked down upon by their own colleagues in the industry and even in society.

I remember some housing societies which refused to give them flats in their societies just because of the brand or label attached to them.

In the 60s , there were actresses like Lalita Pawar (who was also known as the first Indian actress who wore a swimming costume) .

She later turned to playing vampish roles and was at her peak when she played the wicked and wild mother-in-law. Her image lived with her till she died in dire circumstances and her body was found in a small room somewhere in Pune.

She had all the potential to be a great actress, but her being branded first as a sex bomb and then as the wicked woman spoiled all her chances of making it as a good actress, but however , she will always be remembered as the first big sex bomb and vamp of hindi films.

The other women who were branded in the 60s and 70s as sex bombs were Shashikala and Manorama but they could not make it really big even as sex bombs...

But the big sex bombs who were treated on par with any other star came in the late 70s when directors like B.R Isharam , Firoze Chinoy and other such directors who mostly came from the FTII made films based on the subject of sex.

It was in these films that some new actresses almost became cult figures with their roles as sex bombs...

The first actress who make it in a big way as a sex bomb was Rehana Sultan. She was from the FTII and was considered to be one of the better actresses but she had to make just one mistake of opting to do a role in a film called 'Chetna' which was directed by B.R. Isharam who was called 'The barefeet genius ' and the 'high priest of sex in Indian Cinema'.

The film was the story of the life of a prostitute in Bombay and the story justified the director's decision to have some very bold scenes including some suggestive nude scenes and bedroom scenes.

The film was a very big hit and Rehana had to make a decision on whether she would like to play similar scenes in all her other films and she was unfortunate because all the other films that came to her were based on sex and the directors wanted her to do all those bold and daring scenes.

The only time she could make her impact even though it was another film about a woman caught in a trap laced with sex was in the brilliant writer Rajinder Singh Bedi's "Dastak" in which she played her role so realistically that she won the national award for her performance.

However and very unfortunately she was offered the same kind of roles and she ended up being a frustrated actress and was only saved by her director B.R. Ishara who married her.

Now ,Isharam is dead and Rehaana who is in her early 70s struggles to kerp herself alive and she has no one to take care of her .

Some industry people try to help her financially, she even looks for small character roles which she doesn't find. It is a sad case of so much of talent going waste only because she was once branded as a sex bomb.

Asha Sachdev was Rehana's contemporary and was also from the FTII , she too had all the qualities of making it big as a leading lady but when the roles didn't come to her, she too had no other choice but to accept the roles in bold films which naturally demanded her to play bold roles.

And there were two films which branded her as the sex bomb the most, they were , Deven Verma's Bada Kabootar and Ravi Chopra's 'The Burning Train' . Her life and her career was never the same again.

She now lives in an apartment which is in the compound of the bungalow where Saira Bano lives alone in a palace like home. Life can smetimes really be very cruel.

There was another talented actress , also from the FTII , named Radha Saluja. She too could have been quite a successful actress but she did a film called " Do Raha " in which she had to do a rape scene which went down as one of the longest rape scenes in Hindi films. And that was the

YEH SEX BOMBS KA MAAMLA TOH TAB UTHAANA CHAHIYE THA JAB ISS SE AURAT KI BADNAAMI KE SIVA AUR KUCH NAHI HO RAHA THA. AB BHI WAQT HAI KI HUM AURAT KO AISE BADNAAM NAHI KAREN, AUR AURAT KO ZILLAT KI ZINDAGI JEENE KO MAJBOOR NAA KAREIN.